The Hade War

by Luke Carlisle

  Elaine laughed whole heartedly as did the other three men. Greyfall shrugged innocently. Jessen sat forward.

  “Well, you know I’m Jessen. I can charge myself up like a… I don’t know what like.”

  “A sparkly rainbow man,” Israel joked. Everyone laughed and Manning brought over a tray with coffee and milk, setting it on the table which everyone sat around.

  “Think we just got your code name Jessen,” Manning joked.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Jessen picked up a cup for Elaine and stated to pour her coffee. “I can shoot out blasts from my hands, kinda like lasers I guess. I can charge my whole body up but I haven’t fully tested myself. I’m still pretty new to all of this. These two are a different matter.” He pointed to Manning and Israel. “Manning is… well what is Manning?” Jessen asked Israel. Manning spoke before the inevitable insult came from Israel.

  “Tech guy, weapons guys, armour guy, the smartest guy you’ll ever meet in your life,” Manning said while pouring his cup of coffee. “This guy shoots skipping ropes out of his wrists.” Manning gestured to Israel. “His code name is Skippy.”

  “Yeah, Israel is fine thanks.” Israel slapped the back of Manning's head, causing him to spill a bit of his coffee.

  Jessen sat back, enjoying the conversation. He could feel himself starting to become quite emotionally attached to these people around him. The mood soon darkened.

  “Well, this is all very interesting and all but it doesn’t explain Daniel’s disappearance,” Elaine got the conversation back on track. “I have a really bad feeling. Is there anything you can think of that could explain it? No matter how crazy? Do you think he could have been kidnapped? Experimented on? Does that even happen or is it an urban legend?!” Elaine was obviously starting to panic again. Manning sat forward, signalling for her to calm down.

  “Elaine, listen. I’m gonna explain this all to you and I need you to just keep calm and take it all in as fact,” Manning began. “Don’t interrupt or ask anything. It will be a hell of a lot to take in but just wait till the end to ask the inevitable thousand questions you’ll think of along the way. The kidnapping and experiments are real. You heard of Vincent Kennedy?”

  “The business guy? Yeah of course, everyone has.”

  “Ok good. Right, well he’s a dick.” Manning paused for a few moments to sip his coffee. It was a very awkward silence.

  “And that’s our story,” Jessen said keeping his face completely serious. Elaine smiled at him.

  “He’s the one doing the kidnapping and experimenting,” Manning continued. “Kennedy is nothing like the saint you see on TV. He’s been rounding up the super powered and performing all kinds of tests on them like the Nazis did. He wants to benefit from the powers, whether it be finding a power source in one person, a profitable cure for baldness in another… or weaponising another.” Manning locked eyes with Jessen for a moment. He then pointed right at him.

  “Jessen here could blow up half of New Belfast and in another life he did.”

  “Hey!” Jessen interrupted. “Don’t undersell me dude, I blew up the whole of New Belfast.”

  “Right,” Manning continued. “For years now Kennedy has been trying to merge multiple powers together in one person. An all round destructive force he refers to as his Masterpiece. So far he has been unsuccessful. As well as experimenting on the super powered, he employs them, or forces them to work for him. One girl he had control of had the ability to see glimpses of the future involving people with powers. She saw a future which now no longer exists thanks to Greyfall here. When those talks with all the world leaders were taking place here in New Belfast, Jessen was supposed to blow up like a nuke and start world war three.”

  “Unintentionally of course,” put in Jessen.

  “Yeah, so after Jessen accidentally blew all of us to kingdom come all of the countries of the world went to war with one another. Nuclear war, laying the world to waste. That is the world that Greyfall comes from. Don’t question us, just believe me when I say that Greyfall is from the future. A future which now doesn’t exist. In his future they worked out a way to time travel and, long story short, Greyfall came back to our time to assassinate Jessen, preventing the explosion and the resulting Hade War.”

  Those words sent a chill down the back of Jessen’s neck who sat silently, no longer feeling the desire to joke.

  “Greyfall obviously stopped Jessen from exploding without killing him and we all owe our lives to him. He’s basically the reason the world still stands as it is.”

  Elaine looked at Greyfall in amazement.

  “Uh, thanks,” she said. Greyfall nodded.

  “Through the girl, Alicia, I think Kennedy was able to see all of this, so he knows all about Jessen and now all of us. He was able to boost the girls powers to see us as we were in the present. He knows all about us now. Us and Daniel. He sent one of his goons, Mastadon, to get us but he had the wrong location. We’re safe here now though. The girl died. Kennedy only saw us for one part of one night, the same night we were with Daniel last, but he knows all about our collective abilities and Greyfall’s future. It was the first night we were all introduced, so he overheard our entire set of stories and situations. I can also only assume he prepared for any attack from us.”

  “Yeah. I understand. You're going to stop him?” Elaine asked.

  “Yes. But our progress is slow. I’ve been in contact with several others like us trying to enlist help, but it’s a slow and not as successful as I had hoped. Not only will we be taking on Kennedy and his security but he will no doubt have a small army of super powers on his payroll that we’ll have to fight our way through.”

  “What will you do once you’re in there? Kill him?” Elaine asked.

  The men all sat in silence. No one had actually spoken about this before.

  “I don’t want it to come to that. We will destroy everything. Set everyone free. Once everyone is out well take the place apart, brick by brick, hard drive by hard drive. We’ll lay his empire to utter waste. In a nutshell. We end his shit,” Manning finished. “There’s us, and a couple of others including the quiet guy you saw leaving earlier, and Metalcore… Daniel. He’ll be ok Elaine. He’s out there somewhere. I’ve seen him fight his way out of all sorts of situations against all sorts of bad guys. He’s tough.”

  Metalcore shot up out of his hospital bed. The pain was too much. The medication was not working and he had had enough. Running from the bed he exploded out of the windowless room he had been kept in and ran down the hall as fast as he could.

  “Sir! You must go back to your bed!” one nurse yelled at him but it was of no use. He kept running. Several other nurses with patients simply watched as the man with the melted face ran at full speed down the hospital corridor with his gown blowing up around him, exposing his privates. Reaching the end of the hall Metalcore jumped and crashed through the closed window which had him falling towards the parking lot of the hospital. Only a handful of people saw him, but all of them had their cell phones in hand, filming him as he suddenly flew upwards into the rain filled heavens and out of sight.

  “We have your number. When we hear from Daniel, and we will, we’ll contact you immediately.” Manning comforted Elaine as she pulled on her coat and made her way to the elevator.

  “Thank you. I can’t get over how crazy all of this is,” said Elaine.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jessen assured.

  “Yeah. I’m just going to grab some things from home then stay with a friend.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. Do you want one of the guys to go with you just to make sure your safe?” Manning asked.

  “I’ll go with you!” Jessen tried to hide his enthusiasm for the task but failed miserably.

  “Uh, yeah that would be great. Thanks Jessen.” Elaine smiled as she and Jessen entered the elevator.

  “We’re out of coffee. Get some while you’re out sparkly rainbow man,” Manning said.

  “Will do… ol
d… uh … nerd?” Jessen retorted.

  Manning shook his head at the pathetic excuse for an insult as the elevator doors closed.

  “They seem like good guys. I mean, you all seem like good guys,” Elaine said.

  “Yeah they’re not bad,” Jessen agreed. “They’re kinda all I have right now.”

  The elevator doors opened and the two walked out into the lobby. It was raining hard outside.

  “I’m parked a block down. You may as well wait here, I’ll get the car and come round for you,” Elaine instructed as she took out and opened an umbrella from her bag.

  “I will be a total gentleman and allow you to do that for me,” joked Jessen looking out at the rain.

  Elaine ran out into the night down the street towards her car and Jessen took a step outside the door. There was a small area outside the building that was sheltered from the rain so Jessen paced back and forth there. After a minute he stood on something soft and his foot skidded.

  “Aw no!” Jessen exclaimed out loud to himself. At that very moment Elaine pulled up right in front of him in her car. Jessen stood frozen on the spot. There was simply no way to save face in this situation at all. He just stood there.

  “What do I do here?” he thought.

  He kept standing there. Finally, hoping that it would be unnoticeable he got into the passenger side of the car. He immediately noticed it.

  “I just realised you have to make your way home in this,” Elaine said.

  “It’s fine, I’ll get a cab,” he answered, trying to keep his foot hovering above the floor of the car. As Elaine set off there was a tension in the car you could reach out and touch. Jessen said nothing, simply looking out the window. The smell was worse than Jessen could ever have imagined. He started to sweat. Elaine glanced over once or twice. The silence was awful.

  “Do I say something?!” she thought to herself.

  “Please don’t say anything!” he thought to himself.

  Elaine said nothing. The two simply sat in uncomfortable silence the entire fifteen minute ride to her apartment building. When they got inside Jessen wiped his foot as many times as humanly possible on the mat before starting to climb the stairs. Minutes later they were coming back down, still in silence. Jessen was carrying a small luggage bag for Elaine.

  Leaving the building they got into Elaine’s car again and drove to her friends apartment building in the centre of town. It took ten minutes and the two still didn’t say anything. Jessen was biting the inside of his cheek, hoping the pain would take away some of the awkwardness in the car, but it didn’t. His entire body was dripping with embarrassed sweat. He was now worrying that not only did his foot smell terrible, but the rest of him did too. The thought of this made him sweat more in what had become a disgusting vicious circle.

  Arriving at the friends building Elaine finally spoke.

  “I’ll leave you round the corner. There’s a covered taxi stand.”

  “Yeah ok thanks,” Jessen spat out quickly.

  Arriving at the taxi stand he immediately opened the door, jumped out and closed the door again. The window wound down electronically.

  “Jessen?” Elaine called out to him from the drivers side. Jessen bent down to look at her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you walk shit into my car, all the way through my building and into my apartment?” Elaine asked.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t see the point in hesitating or lying.

  Elaine stared at him for a moment then drove off without saying another word.

  “Oh thank God!” Jessen exclaimed out loud. “Taxi!”

  Later that night Manning mopped up the puddle in the middle of the hideout floor while Israel and Greyfall sat nearby in silence trying to take in the nights… what do you even call that? Events? Series of madness? Jessen was lying shivering on a sofa muttering small syllables which made no sense together.

  “What the hell kind of night was that huh?” Manning asked them. Backwards and forwards at the same time? Fast and slow at the same time? Sounds like a bad acid trip in reverse…”

  Chapter 11

  The next thing Jessen knew, he was being carried out of the fire escape exit of a hospital by a man he didn’t know who was grasping a knife. He was dripping in sweat and blood. His clothes were half burnt off of him. He could hardly focus on anything happening around him. His limbs ached and his energy was all but spent. He had to concentrate to suck in irregular breaths. He lifted his head up for a second only to see who was helping him. The man didn’t look in any way strong or abnormal, like Ronan or Greyfall. He also didn’t seem to have that much grace about him like Israel. As far as Jessen could tell he was just a normal guy.

  He was lead to a car whose lights flashed as it unlocked. The strange man struggled to open the back door and shoved Jessen onto the back seat.

  “Grey…fah…” Jessen struggled to get out any coherent words as the man got into the drivers seat and drove out of the hospital car park.

  “Greyfall…” Jessen managed to say softly. The man turned and looked at him.

  “Wait, what did you say? Greyfall? As in… Manning’s Greyfall?”

  “Manning!” Jessen managed to shout.

  The man turned back to look ahead as he drove the car, increasing his speed.

  “You’re a lucky son of a bitch. Hade I’m guessing.”

  Jessen passed out as he watched the lights of New Belfast float by while they drove. To where, he did not know.

  The nurse was flung from the bed and sent crashing against the wall. The two others tried to hold Jessen down but despite his weakened state he easily overpowered them.

  “No! No!” he kept yelling as if speaking to someone unseen in the room.

  Sparks were flying from his body at random moments and in different directions. One spark caught a nurse on the hand and she wailed in agony. No damage was done but it hurt like hell. Eventually one of the nurses saw a gap in Jessen’s struggling and was able to stick a needle into his neck, injecting him with a sedative. He calmed down quickly but was still conscious.

  The door suddenly burst open and a man charged into the room.

  “Sir! You can’t be in here! This is a restricted area!” one of the nurses barked. The man ignored them and began lifting Jessen off of the bed.

  “Stop!” yelled the same nurse as she jumped to the bed and tried to wrestle him away from Jessen. One nurse ran out into the hallway shouting for help while the other wrestled with the intruder.

  The man calmly twisted her away from him and quickly pulled out a knife.

  The ambulance siren screamed as it raced through the city streets towards the hospital. From the outside it looked as though a strobe light was flashing on the inside. On the inside Jessen was sparking wildly, completely out of control. The ambulance crew had given up trying to sedate him and had piled into the front of the vehicle. Jessen’s bursts were enough to gently melt the panels around him, but not enough to do significant damage to the ambulance whereby it could not keeping driving.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that?!” one of the crew yelled.

  “No but who the hell knows what’s going on. Some guy flew out of one of the other hospitals tonight. He flew!” another responded.

  The EMTs found Jessen screaming, writhing and sparking uncontrollably in the graveyard.

  “No! No!” Jessen yelled at seemingly no one.

  “What the hell is this?!” a female EMT asked panicked.

  “No freakin idea, what can we even do here?” the male responded as the two slowly approached Hade.

  “The call said he was being terrorised or something, but what could be doing this to him?! Can we even take him in the ambulance? Is he safe in a hospital?” the female asked.

  “I have no idea. Get the sedative quick!”

  The female EMT dropped her pack on the ground and prepared a needle filled with a strong sedative.

  “I’m using more than normal,” she let her partner know.
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  “Yeah. I would,” he approved. “Where did the cop go?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on!”

  The gun shot snapped into the night air and caught Nagra in the shoulder who turned unfazed to identify his attacker. Spirit Of Confusion and Spirit Of Fear turned as well and immediately ran to Nagra. The bullet had definitely hit its mark but there was no sign of a wound or even the slightest phasing in his target. The cop had never seen anything like it.

  “Everyone on the ground now!” officer Josiah Versette barked. Confusion turned to Nagra.

  “Dark skin… hisssthh… looks wonderful!” he hissed through sharpened teeth.

  “On the ground now!” Josiah ordered confidently. Spirit Of Fear also turned to Nagra.

  “Confident one. All alone with no fear,” Spirit Of Fear mocked.

  “Do I sound like I am afraid of you?!” Josiah yelled confidently. Spirit Of Fear began to cower slightly behind Nagra. “I’m only gonna tell you one more time. Back away from that man now!”

  “You really think you can do this?” Josiah heard a calm, deep, dark voice in his head.

  Nagra lashed out his hand toward the lone police officer. A whip of flames scorched across his upper body causing him to fall backwards. Josiah’s instinct and reaction was well timed. The fire only scorched his clothes and mildly hurt. He rolled back on the ground and drew his weapon. Before he could take aim he grabbed his head as if to right himself. A set of red eyes were moving across his immediate vision leaving a trail of bright red wherever they went, like a plane leaves it’s trail in the sky. He could make out that one of these figures was moving back and forth in front of him in what seemed to be in both slow motion and super speed at the same time. Josiah closed his eyes and shook his head as if to wake from a dream. He struggled to think straight. Opening his eyes again he nearly fell completely over as if he was off balance on a boat, like the ground was moving below his feet. The red eyes still left trails in front of him as the danced back and forth and slow and rapid speed at the same time.